Satellites in geostationary orbit (GSO) have been widely preferred for several decades because of the economic advantages afforded by such orbit. In a geostationary orbit, a satellite traveling above the Earth's equator, in the same direction as that in which the Earth is rotating, and at the same angular velocity, appears stationary relative to a point on the Earth. These satellites are always “in view” at all locations within their service areas, so their utilization efficiency is effectively 100 percent. Antennas at Earth ground stations need be aimed at a GSO satellite only once; no tracking system is required.
Coordination between GSO's and with terrestrial services is facilitated by governmental allocation of designated “slots” spatially spaced according to service type. Given the desirability of geostationary satellite orbits and the fact that there are only a finite number of available “slots” in the geostationary “belt,” the latter capacity has been essentially saturated with satellites operating in desirable frequency bands up through the Ku-band (up to 18 GHz). As a result, the government has been auctioning the increasingly scarce remaining slots.
This has encouraged the development of complex and expensive new systems including those using low Earth orbits (LEO's), medium Earth orbits (MEO's), and/or higher frequencies, for example, the Ka band (up to approximately 40 GHz). Proposed LEO and MEO applications have circular based orbits. Growth to higher frequencies is limited by problems of technology and propagation, and expansion in satellite applications requires exploitation of the spatial dimension (i.e., above and below the GSO belt). A host of proposed LEO and MEO systems exemplify this direction. A drawback of LEO and MEO systems for users is the relative uncertainty of satellite position, and rapid motion, leading typically to the use of omni-directional antennas having low gain, which limits data rate. Another drawback is that they must be designed not to interfere with previously deployed, currently constructed, or future planned GSO satellite systems. This may require cycling the satellite off and on during flight into the beam of a GSO satellite.
Typical LEO and MEO systems with relatively low altitude circular orbit constellations require a large number of satellites for coverage at a specified elevation angle to a single service area. The drawback to the large number of satellites is that several launches must be used to deploy the satellites. This increases the cost of the system dramatically.
Another known proposed system is the so called “Virtual GSO” (VGSO) by Virtual Geosatellite LCC. The VGSO system is a non-geostationary orbit system. The proposed VGSO requires 15 satellites to achieve global landmass coverage and wide separation away from GSO satellites. The main drawback to this system is that 15 satellites are required to achieve coverage. In many instances this may be cost prohibitive for a preliminary system.
Similar to VGSO system, another known system is a non-geostationary orbit system called “Denali” by Denali Telecom. The proposed system requires 3 satellites to achieve initial non-global coverage and 9 satellites to achieve the final global landmass coverage. Satellites in both initial and final deployment have a wide separation away from GSO satellites. The main drawback to this system is that 9 satellites are required to achieve global coverage. Yet another known system is the “West” system by the European Space Agency. The West system has nine satellites with the same ground track on Earth surface. The nine satellites are disposed in nine individual circular orbits whose ground tracks follow the same pattern that provides focused coverage at three highly populated regions, US, Europe, and East Asia. Drawbacks of this system are that its coverage is not optimized for landmass coverage and its coverage is not a near global.
While the various prior systems function relatively satisfactorily and efficiently, none discloses the advantages of a satellite system using overhead elliptical, eccentric sub-geosynchronous satellite orbits in accordance with the present invention as is hereinafter more fully described.